The Director’s office papers, correspondence, publications, talks, and misc. papers of Glyn Morris span a little over a decade from 1931 until 1942. His work in the establishment of the Rural Youth Guidance Institute is not fully covered in this index. The index captures the currently processed documents of Morris’s years at Pine Mountain Settlement School as well as the period of his enlistment as a Chaplain during WWII and his return to Evarts, Kentucky as Assistant to Harlan County Superintendent of Schools, James A. Cawood. The documents are scattered across the formal collection of “Director’s Office Files” found in the organized and boxed Berea microfilmed records; in the Pine Mountain Settlement School’s general Director’s files; in the Rural Youth Guidance Institute files (partial); and within the correspondence of other Pine Mountain Settlement School staff, students and associates. The documents associated with Glyn Morris’s are voluminous and often necessarily duplicates across various collections.

In 1977 as Morris reflected on his time at Pine Mountain, he was 72. He was retired and living in Pennsylvania where he was writing his autobiography. He mused

I sometimes ponder, with wonder, as to how the concept of time has changed in my lifetime. From knowing men who fought in the Civil War — my experience covered nearly a century — and who could tell of their experiences, to the space age! How fast can we go and survive?

Morris did not live to know the web and its rapid technology and media development and dissemination. He would have heard us asking the same question: How fast can we go and survive?

SPEECHES, WRITING (UNPUBLISHED)

1931

Glyn Morris’s first year as Director of Pine Mountain Settlement School can be found in these documents that capture exchanges with his staff, outside resources and previous contacts. Arriving at the school at the age of 27, Morris, with all the eagerness of youth, clearly had grand ideas as he charts a new course for the School. Influenced by his instruction at Union Theological School in New York and the influence of instructors such as Reinhold Niebuhr, and a strong interest in the new educational ideas of John Dewey and others, Morris set about to develop a new educational philosophy for the Settlement School. In his own words Morris describes that initial transition from the intensely urban environment of New York City to the isolated rural community of Pine Mountain in the Central Appalachians of Kentucky in his 1977 autobiography, Less Travelled Roads

The move from New York to Pine Mountain, Kentucky, took us from one extreme to another; the move meant not only a change in geography, but with respect to surroundings, customs, and methods of living, placed us back into an earlier period of history. We exchanged subways and towering modern buildings and apartment houses for log cabins, muleback and foot travel; the sophisticated environment of Morningside Heights and the pushing crowds of Times Square for the restrained, “furriner-shy” non-talkative mountaineers; Macy’s department store, Fifth Avenue shops for a small, sparsely stocked country store and the “Wish Book” (any mail-order house catalogue — mainly Sears and “Monkey Wards”). Childs’ and Chinese restaurants for cornbread, shucky beans and heavy doses of salt pork and breakfasts with thick gravy. The rush and bustle of the city for the slow pace of the time before the railroads, the place where, as James Still stated, “…men here wait as mountains long have waited.”

1932

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

By 1937 Morris had begun to doubt himself and his reasons for remaining at Pine Mountain. He wrote to his mentor Arthur J. Swift at Union Theological, “Gladys and I are thinking of leaving Pine Mountain….Now will you tell us in all frankness just what you think?” He stayed.

1977

1994

Morgan, Colin, and Glyn Morris. “The Student View of Tutorial Support: Report of a Survey of Open University Education Students.” Open Learning: the Journal of Open and Distance Learning. 9.1 (1994): 22-33. Print.

1998

Morgan, Colin, and Glyn Morris. Good Teaching and Learning: Pupils and Teachers Speak. New York: Open University Press, 1998. Print.

2000

*Morris, Glyn. Nights and Days with Edmund Wilson: An “Upstate” Friendship. Typescript draft of Glyn Morris’ memoir of his friendship with Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) from roughly 1950 to 1970. Gift of Barbara Morris to Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, in 2000. Unpublished Print.